iPod: the beginning of the end?

[Steve A.]

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The thing about the Beatles' CDs is they are from the Parlophone masters, and not the Capital masters... which is a good thing really, at least if you grew up in the States. The Capital masters sound like crap. They added reverb to try and cover up the bad quality.

Funny thing is I still haven't gotten all the Beatles stuff on CD... I started at Revolver and up. One of these days I'll pick up the older stuff...

There is a whole sub-culture of Beatles connoiseurs who eagerly await the latest release from Dr. Ebbetts or Mirror Spock, two of the more notorious "bootleggers":

http://www.knology.net/~jfksmusic/dr_ebbetts_1.htm

While much better than the original Capitol albums, the cds based on the UK releases leave much to be desired, at least for the connoiseurs. Which provides a market for Dr. Ebbetts, et al. Some of their releases are "needle drops" of highly-regarded vinyl issues that were never played; they may add some EQ or processing to make them sound even better (a point which is debated by many). In any case, practically ALL of the albums on that page sound better than the official releases, which have the clarity of mud from a frog pond. LOL

Steve Ahola

[bob p]

I've been picking up some of the Dr. Ebbetts albums via Demonoid. I haven't had a chance to give them a proper listening yet. It would be interesting to compare their needle drops on virgin vinyl to my imported vinyl source -- which appears to be their source medium as well. essentially, they're doing the experiment that i had always thought about but had never actually gotten around to doing -- ripping from album to CD, 20 years after the recording medium has had an opporutnity to shake some of the bugs out...

Enzo, you're right -- some of the Sgt. Pepper's tracks are definitely different recordings between mono and stereo, presumably because they were recorded on different takes. One thing that might not be obvious to everyone (especially the young-uns) is that the Beatles were dealing some serious recording technology limitations when they recorded Pepper. The entire album was ping-ponged on a 4-track machine. When that record was recorded, the mixing was done in real time, and they only had once shot at getting it right. In contrast, most "modern" tapes in the pre-digital era were recorded on 16-track or 32-track (maybe 64-track) tape. Mixing could be done as an afterthought. Of course, in the era of hard-disk recording its totally different now.

[David Schwab]

The mono mixes are different because if you take a stereo recording and mix it into mono, you get some phase cancelations. So George Martin used to do separate mono mixes.

[Steve A.]

The mono mixes are different because if you take a stereo recording and mix it into mono, you get some phase cancelations. So George Martin used to do separate mono mixes.

David:

Back in the mid-60's, most of the rock/pop bands would record their material twice- once in mono and a second time in stereo. The mono mixes were used for the mono LP's and the 45's (stereo 45's came out later). There usually wasn't a lot of improvisation going on back then, so both versions would be very similar. (Songs had prearranged instrumental breaks more than solos.)

For the Beatles this was true up until Abbey Road, which I believe used "fold down" on the stereo tracks to create the mono release in all countries except for Brazil. Well, that's what the guy selling me the Brazil mono recording told me... LOL "Sgt Peppers" was one of the first albums recorded on four tracks- which would allow them to make stereo and mono mixes from the same recordings; earlier records were recorded on 1, 2 or 3 track machines.

For more recent history, Capitol Records released the second volume of the box set of the US Beatles records, and there was quite a controversy because the initial release used "fold down" to create the mono mixes. (This was corrected in the SK1 version of this box set.)

Just thought you'd like to know...

Steve Ahola

[Steve A.]

I've been picking up some of the Dr. Ebbetts albums via Demonoid. I haven't had a chance to give them a proper listening yet. It would be interesting to compare their needle drops on virgin vinyl to my imported vinyl source -- which appears to be their source medium as well...

Well, Dr. Ebbetts would often use the MFSL LP's, at least for his earliest vinyl rips, and the Black Box vinyl reissues for his later ones... these all being the Holy Grail of the Beatles albums. I had collected most of the Beatles albums in their UK or German incarnations back in the 80's, but I don't believe that most of these would be up to Dr. Ebbetts standards (even if they hadn't lost their virginity long ago).

That being said, vinyl rips of even standard US releases often have nuances that I don't hear on the CD versions, remastered or not. When CDs first came out, at least the good ones impressed me with all of the details I did not hear on my older LP's- you could hear various parts which had been obscured, at least on my old copies. But there is often a certain warmth and ambience that is missing from the CD versions, and you can sometimes capture that with your own vinyl rip.

Many afficionados insist that no post-processing be done to vinyl rips but the digital tools have gotten pretty slick. ClickRepair 2.1 does a great job of removing most of the pops and clicks without otherwise effecting the sound too much. The remaining crap can be cleaned up manually with Cool Edit Pro 2, and I will usually add a touch of noise reduction on the fade-outs of the songs, where the rumbly noises can mask the musical content. (Without NR a fade out might last only 1 second instead of 2.) The trick to all of the post processing is to apply it only lightly- too much and you do lose the natural ambience of the vinyl rip.

People are also doing 24 bit /96khz vinyl rips- I originally questioned this because I know that the primitive recording equipment didn't go much higher than 20khz. However, the higher resolution rips do pick up *something* that isn't on the 16/44.1 rips- I think it is the natural ambience from the needle- something that you hear when listening to a vinyl LP on a nice stereo.

Steve Ahola

[bob p]

People are also doing 24 bit /96khz vinyl rips- I originally questioned this because I know that the primitive recording equipment didn't go much higher than 20khz. However, the higher resolution rips do pick up *something* that isn't on the 16/44.1 rips- I think it is the natural ambience from the needle- something that you hear when listening to a vinyl LP on a nice stereo.

Interesting. I had always thought that my hearing rolled off sharply above 15k like everyone else who had reached middle age. I had fallen into that slump where I believed that everything above 20k just didn't matter. That is, until recently when I replaced my main speakers with a pair of speakers that are flat all of the way out to 35k, and hooked them up to a solid state amp.

Although I can not consciously identify test tones in the 20k-30k range, my ears did hurt after being exposed to them but not hearing them. I've found that I can appreciate the the presence of extreme HF content on some of the modern recordings on a more subconscious level. Its hard to explain, but I think that there is some information up there that helps to provide information that my brain interprets as "air" or "abmbience" or "spaciality." In an effort to try to prove to myself that I was not hallucinating, I built a switchable bandpass filter that selectively passed/blocked the extreme HF signals.

What I found most interesting about the Beatles CDs was that the 10k-35k driver in my speakers gets almost no signal when playing a Beatles CD. I'm guessing that all of that HF content was rolled off during mastering back in the day.

[bob p]

have any of you file-sharing folks noticed that Demonoid has been offline for a few days now? I found a news story about it. It looks like the recording industry has hammered them:

http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-shu...y-cria-070925/